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More car p*rn!



When I was a kid the two cars I really loved were the Lamborghini Countach and the Ferrari 512 BB. The Countach always won because it was just so batsh*t mental to look at but as I've got older the Boxer just seems to get prettier and prettier.

Finally unlocked the Top Gear test track yesterday. I had to win a race round the track (starting from 12th) against (and driving) identical VW camper vans, top speed 60mph, acceleration: glacial. It was the hardest, meanest challenge I've ever seen in a GT game.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Surely it shoulda be 12 'reasonably priced cars'!

(With all the others driven by Paul McKenna, hypnotically saying 'McKenna, McKenna' to himself, a la Malkovich? )

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I wouldn't be surprised if Clarkson had a hand in designing that challenge. The show and GT have had a working relationship for a few years since JC tried to go round Laguna Seca in a Honda NSX faster than he could manage it with the same model in a GT game - the results were freakishly similar.

Auto erotica! Clicky clicky!

In a bid for pre-Xmas bankruptcy, I've gone and bought a Kinect. As a present to myself (I've decided to finally knock the cigs on the head for good, now my 35th birthday is looming. Figured this might help).

Should be fun for the winter months hopefully. Been scanning through the games on offer, and it all looks a bit paltry at the moment tho. I might get the sporty one, just for some variety over the xmas hols with the family. And I've got my lady the yoga one, as I think she might like, and it seems the most polished offering so far.

Also stumbled on this upcoming 'son of Rez', which I hadn't heard about...

http://www.viddler.com/simple/21d85b37/

The previews of kinect-use suggest it's not the greatest way to play it tho, for the most part, which is a shame. It does make ya hopeful for future bespoke releases that make good use of the tech tho - current gen graphics and a novel 'active' way of controlling em. I can't help but think designers could do something pretty damn sweet with this .

Has anyone tried one out? Mine doesn't arrive for a bit. Any recos on games?

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Hah, just found this.



Begloved conductor shoots woman in face with his magic jazz hands. Surreal.

I've gotta admit I don't see '1st person shooter' as an area where this is gonna excel. And you can see it's just been shoehorned in here. Quite suitable for the game tho I guess (I found the original to be more about the novelty of the vibe than the gameplay)

I've heard that, yep, there's huge potential there but the games on offer right now lend the player a pretty detached experience from the actual gameplay. Not bought it, really doubt if I will ever.

I bought Playstation Move though and am regretting it slightly - It seems great (and apparently offers more functionality than the Wii-thingies) but there's not much out there to play. High Velocity Bowling worked perfectly well with the Sixaxis motion sensor and no better with the Move (free download patch fortunately), the pool/snooker Hustle Kings game isn't improved and Resident Evil 5 is positively ruined by it.

The one I held out real hope for was Heavy Rain but the motion controls offer no tangible improvement to the normal ones.

Things will improve once more games get released which were designed for Move from the outset but right now I have it hidden in a drawer, lest visitors think it's a vibrator and have visions of the seedy caravan scene from Zodiac...

I'm still a smoker.

Who knew the joystick would lose it's position as 'most comically penile gaming device'. The march of progress

Yeah, it's gonna take a while for proper games to emerge for these things. I guess the Move will have the accuracy and the Kinect the bizarre flexibility of input. (I can't say I wasn't drawn in by the potential for Minority Report style menu controls, and voice control too - hilariously glitchy tho they seem to be at the moment . [Who really wants to bark 'Xbox!' at their xbox all the time?]).

To be fair tho, I have always wanted to be able to actually shout at the ref in football games (and more practically - at other AI characters to make a run etc). It's gonna be fun to see what they come up with. (Unless they can improve the kinect's apparent sluggish aspects via downloads tho, I imagine it's gonna get surpassed fairly swiftly by something classier/more-accurate. I hope I haven't just bought the new Wii - all novelty and no real guile :S).

Down with that sort of thing! (Sorry, just trying to summon up my inner student )

Don't talk to me about inner students! I once threw eggs at Kenneth Baker!

Motion-sensing things which I thought would be fun included the head-tracking feature in Gran Turismo 5. Basically, when your in cockpit mode you can look out of the side windows, just as you would do when negotiating hairpin bends. Unfortunately, when you're sitting in your living room and turning your head while looking at the TV you don't see the road ahead at all - You see your living room wall and the camera panning off-centre out of the corner of your eye, quickly followed by the wall you're about to plough into because you've taken your eyes off the road.

As I said to the guy in GAME who tried to flog me Kenect - What happens when a wasp gets into the room when you're playing?

He looked blankly at me but, to be fair, he does work in GAME...

Heh, an in-sofa heated seat'd be more use

Yeah, I am a bit worried about novelty over content. But the idea of some craftily-crafted game from The Shadows of the Collosus lot, say, that could tap into the kinect spread of inputs still has me hoping. (Altho come to think of it, it'd probably take them 10 years to ever release the damn thing )

Apparently you can walk away from it and it pauses automatically. But yeah, what about a dog shagging your leg too. They need to consider these things. Or at least incorporate a dog avatar into the game at those moments

I've never understood the appeal of motion gameplay. There again, I have no desire to play online either, so I guess it's all just passed me by.

For my part, I just need an excuse to jump around. I go mental when I stop smoking. (This way is possibly more dignified than racing vans up the road like a deranged dog. Maybe )

And who knows, the gaming side might kick in eventually. I don't reckon it'd all have to be stand up 'embodiment' stuff either. (I found the CSI demo mildly diverting recently, even tho it had a cruddy interface, and it was CSI. If it'd had a Minority Report style interface I probably woulda liked it twice as much tho )

One of the big appeals of online play is that it's always better than the A.I. (which is far more predictable), and there's always a bunch of people ready to play, no matter what time or day it is.

You wouldn't wanna be in the process of quitting and be playing Metal Gear Solid 4 - The loading screens are snake smoking an entire king size and clearly enjoying every single moment. Kojima has got form in that respect as cigarettes were an integral part of your equipment in MGS1 because the smoke would show up laser-triggered traps.

Gotta love Japanese games - I'd love to see some poor Ubisoft or EA minion take the loading screen idea to his boss.

I bought the HD remix of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (with God of War and Sly Cooper, Sony finally seem to be getting their arse in gear with respect to their massive PS2 back catalogue) and absolutely loved the first half hour of it. I don't think there's been a better runny jumpy climby game since but my eyes glazed over when I got to the first puzzle.

Puzzles just interrupt the runny jumpy climby stuff.

revisiting this one

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Kinect hacks...

This freaked the living bejesus out of me...

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This is long, repetitious, and somehow also thoroughly disturbing...



Kinect Number 5 is alive...

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Well, the servers I need to do my job have imploded, so I've just been looking at 2011 kinect titles...

This one looks perfect for Mofo!

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Altho looking at this longer bit of gameplay footage, it does look pretty ropey. Still, fun idea

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Seems like there are some more 'hardcore' style titles on the way. At least one horror one it seems, & a WW2 FPS by the look of it for starters. I just hope they're not on 'rails' like the upcoming Star Wars one seems to be. They need to find some way to navigate 3D environments, especially 'on foot'. Big ask really. Coz even with a car... it can look dumb...

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Tatty, that seemed to have everything wrong with it you talked about before. Why 'air drive' over using a controller? And what's with the 'lean to look around your car' thing. Can't see this working.

This looks more promising to me tho (even tho it's only a trailer)...



A bit of Avatar-style dragon-swooping. You could use minor feet movements to steer flight, and maybe one hand for changing height, and the other for deploying weapons etc. More promising

I'm actually watching a used Kinect bundle on eBay which has a day to go and is at an insanely low price. I'd be tempted purely on price grounds but am thinking that it'll muck up my home cinema centre speaker placement.

Re: Forza. I agree totally - The thing with sims like that is the feeling of immersion (the dedicated players all have cockpits like an F1 simulator) and having no controller at all, even a gamepad would totally break the immersion. They witter on about it in the vid and I would expect better from Turn10.

Wonder what the proposed Kinect patch for Fable III will be like? That is one deeply disappointing game on its own and large parts of the interface seem to have been dumbed down with a view to some sort of Kinect interaction.

I heard that the kinect has some problems recognizing African Americans unless the light in the room is really really bright.


On an unrelated note - picked up Borderlands for a little bit. Interesting, but not really that engaging.

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Suspect's Reviews

Fallout 3.

Best game I've played in quite some time.

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NICE!

I played through most of Shenmue II back in the day, but now that I think about it, I may have never finished it. Maybe I'll pick it up cheap somewhere.

In my opinion, the original Shenmue is still a gorgeous game. The painstaking design details hold up even by today's standards. I know a lot of people thought it was overrated and somewhat boring in its day, but Shenmue completely sucked me into its very believable, day-to-day world. Such a wonderful break from futuristic spy shooters and sweeping fantasy epics. And I'm still waiting on the final chapter.